General
Financial institution customers have lost millions over the years, putting the funds into the wrong places, not monitoring their accounts, and not demanding certain things from their financial institutions.
Credit Cards
- Your credit card number, expiration date, and other information should be on the back of the credit card and not the front.
- You should be required to enter a pin to confirm local purchases at all times.
- For all online purchases, the bank should require an email or text message confirmation.
- Using your computer or your phone application, you should be able to:
- Control the number of daily expenditures and the maximum that can be spent for any transactions.
- Block internet transactions, local transactions, or all transactions.
- You should be able to download your monthly transaction in a format which you can open with the Excel software. This would facilitate better analysis of the transactions.
- You should be advised of all transactions on your credit card via email or text messages.
Debit Cards
The same requirements for a credit card should apply to debit cards where applicable.
Investment Accounts
You should receive monthly statements.
You should be advised of any transaction by email and/or text messages immediately.
All transactions should be authorized by the client electronically or by signing a document.
Any transfer of funds over JAD1 million and less than JMD5 million should be authorized by a supervisor. Transfer of funds between JMD5 million and JMD10 million should be authorized by a supervisor and a manager. Anything above JAD10 million should also be authorized by the head of the institution also.
Appointment of Consumer Advisors
Banks should have a team of their customers appointed as advisors to the bank. These persons would provide feedback on how to improve services.
Communicating With Your Bank
Your bank should allow you to communicate with them directly from your bank application. This would reduce the need to call the bank and to wait for a long time before your call is handled. This could also mean reducing the reliance on call centres. Many of us cannot understand the accents of these workers and a few are rude and impatient.
Your communication would be attached to your account. An officer looking at your account in the future would be able to see the history of your challenges.
Treatment of Dormant Accounts
Accounts can become dormant when people migrate or they have forgotten that they have an account at a financial institution. People can forget when, due to age, they suffer from dementia, for example.
The funds in a dormant account do not belong to the bank nor the government. If an account holder dies, then such funds should go to their estate of the account holder. To do otherwise, I would call it legalized fraud.
Customers should be allowed to add at least two contacts to their banking information so that if the owner of the account cannot be contacted, the bankers can contact the persons listed as contacts on the account.
I am sure you have other ideas, so please share them as comments below this blog. You can also send your WhatsApp comments in voicemails at 876 816-5261 for me to share publicly.
Let's not wait until another Usain Bolt et al. lose their funds before we demand action. Let us not sit down, wait, and blame the government for our inaction. Remember the weakest organization in Jamaica is the Consumers League, and yet we are all consumers. I am a consumer advocate, and I cannot even find supporters. It will be interesting to see how many people add their comments and share this article.
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